Memory Bonds

Harmoni and Fleck stood at a bus stop with two other people.

Neither of them had dragons. Disapointing.

It wasn’t a public stop, that took you to places in the city. In fact, Harmoni was pretty sure they didn’t have public transport in the city. People walked, or biked, or took a dragon. There were a few vehicles around, but calling them cars was a stretch. Golf carts maybe.

No. This bus stop was the start of a tour. A zenny had redone an old bus, to show off some sights around Xentron City.

It had been a week since she and Cooper had been to the garden, and it was her third day off. The second one had been good. She’d bought another plain shirt and another pair of jeans. While the place Udo had shown her for groceries was good, there were a few specialized places that had more varieties of certain foods as well. The bakery Harmoni had tried to work at was one example. There was also a place that sold just produce, if you were looking for a specific fruit or vegetable. Easy to track down with Fleck’s nose. The oddest was the butcher shop owned by a dragon, without a rider species in sight.

(It seemed Fleck had gotten her to call them that as well.)

The rider might not be in sight, but Fleck was positive they existed. He doubted any dragon would set up shop in the city if it wasn't soul bonded to another species.

Xentron City seemed a bit different from cities on the other planets. There were a lot of specialized stores. Aside from the food examples, Udo and Aqua made their own soap, and only one other place seemed to sell soap in the city.

Xentron didn’t have a big population.

It had a pretty big population of dragons.

And it wasn’t easy to transport things to different planets, long journey. That might be why.

She’d found a library in the North East corner of town. It worked a bit different than other libraries. Anyone who wanted to check a book out or use resources needed to pay a small fee every other month. But you could just sit inside the building and read a book without paying if you wanted.

She’d read one of their books and browsed some of the others during her time off. (Aside from her full day off, she only worked half days at Udo's, after all.) She’d even found some small cards on the galaxy’s planets and sentient species that she wasn’t sure were supposed to be there. They’d been slipped into a book and seemed incomplete. Still, despite being small, and probably biased, they’d had some information Harmoni hadn’t known.

She had also seen the advertisement for this bus tour at the library. They had a lot of time, and this seemed like a logical way to spend it. They might learn some new things, and could see more of the city without constantly walking.

The week at work had been alright, good even. But nothing much was different than the last week. Except that she'd gotten one of the rough brushes and helped scrub a dragon. Still didn't really talk to them, but she could help with the cleaning.

One of the dragons had actually thought she was mute until she'd slipped on the floor, and yelped.

“You have a dragon?”

The question broke Harmoni from her thoughts. She turned. It was one of the people waiting at the stop with her who’d asked the question, a human woman.

Harmoni nodded. She still didn’t like talking to strangers.

Did she like talking at all?

But the topic outweighed that. “I thought almost everyone had one,” she admitted.

“Almost,” the woman emphasized. “I was deemed too old to form a proper bond.”

Harmoni frowned. That had come up before. It was why Ferren didn’t have a dragon. It wasn’t really about age; it was about life experiences. It was harder to bond with someone who’d had something very unique in their life. Harder to conceptualize, if you hadn’t done it. It was just, the older you got, the more likely you were to have one of those.

“I’m sorry,” Harmoni said.

The woman shrugged. She turned to the other person at the stop, an imp man. “What about you?”

The imp opened his mouth. Harmoni didn’t want to judge, but it looked like he was bearing his pointy teeth. “I’m not about to have my mind altered with a thing like that.”

Fleck tried not to show how angry he was. Harmoni had been worried, but worry didn't seem like the emotion happening here, and Fleck didn't like it. Dragons weren’t some evil corrupting force, they were sentient beings. As many other sentient beings liked to forget. And the bond was mutual. If there was any mind altering, it was equal.

Harmoni didn’t want to start something, but she didn’t want anyone to speak about Fleck like that either. Luckily, they were interrupted by the bus pulling up.

The doors opened. Inside was a zenny, who quickly bounded down the stairs, and out the entrance. He had brown hair and amber eyes. His skin was mostly dark gray, but unlike any zenny she’d seen before, or anyone at all really, he had lighter gray splotches on parts of his skin.

“Hello people!” the zenny greeted, giving a huge wave. “And dragon. Huh. Usually dragons are a little big for the bus.” He chuckled. “Well, you’re all here for the tour. Come on in.”

He didn’t wait for any of them to confirm they’d bought a ticket or anything, but having foresight, maybe he didn’t need to.

He stepped aside and gestured for everyone to go up. Harmoni didn’t right away. He spoke so fast, she was sort of processing it. The human apparently agreed. The imp just laughed and got on.

Fleck climbed onto Harmoni’s shoulder, then they went in as well.

Inside there were some seats up by the driver’s seat. It was about two rows on either side. So the bus could hold about eight people. After that, there was a white curtain blocking their view.

Based on the smells, he probably lived back there. Fleck could pick up the smells from a kitchen easily. There was also the smells of what was probably a bathroom, and a bed.

Huh.

The public area of the bus seemed nicer than most busses. Harmoni was pretty sure. Had she been on a bus before?

Anyway. The seats were completely covered without any tears. The walls were painted a blue that looked nice, and would probably hide a lot of stains.

There weren’t many, based on smell.

The windows were open, and Harmoni didn’t even see any glass that could close them. But there were pulled back curtains that could close over the windows. Fabric curtains with several stripes of color.

“Alright!” the zenny shouted.

Harmoni jumped, and dropped into the nearest seat like a rock.

The zenny clapped. “I’m Roosher. I’ll be giving you your tour. Now, let’s get this show on the road.”

His speaking had slowed down just slightly, but he might’ve been thinking of what to say.

With that, he swung into the driver’s seat, and the bus rumbled to life.

~~~

“And that’s the Tower Royal. About the closest thing you’ll get to a government in this city,” Roosher explained as they drove past. “There’s always some project going on in there. And it’s the best place to go if you run into any local trouble.”

The imp snorted. “Assuming they’re not causing the local trouble.”

“That’s true,” Roosher actually agreed.

Harmoni looked at the building. It was tall, red, and in the middle of Xentron. But it didn’t stick out that much. It was about the same height as the buildings around it, and there had been stranger colors in the city.

There were a lot of naturally colorful rocks on the planet, in the cave systems. Probably explained that.

Maybe if you saw the sign on the front door, you would realize the building was important.

The building was large, with openings on the wall, so it seemed at least some dragons could get in. That was nice. Even if some of them would probably be perfectly happy outside, like Aqua.

The human, sitting in the row behind Harmoni, raised her hand. “I’m confused. Are there really no-”

“Xentron’s a relatively newly discovered planet. You might get something like a mayor in the towns. But in terms of planet-wide government? The closest things are the three groups vying for power.”

“By groups, he means gangs,” the imp translated.

“That’s a little disingenuous,” Roosher said. “Anyway, the groups are the Faradays, the Divergence, and the Desert Crest. The Desert Crest are the ones who live in Tower Royal. They’re just, generally the best group to go to if you’re a random civilian, and they do have a crest. You can see it on the sign.”

You could also just go to the dragons. They didn’t have one ruler of the entire planet, but they were from Xentron. They had some systems of power set up.

“Now, if there’s no more questions here, we have more stops.”

~~~

“And out here is one of the dragon caves. I’m sure there are more entrances, and more caves.” Roosher glanced back at Fleck. He was still driving the bus, without looking ahead. Fleck just pulled his lips back into something like a smirk. “Alright. Keep your secrets then.”

Harmoni smiled.

Fleck liked this guy. He had no dragon, and definitely couldn’t understand his language, but he still spoke to Fleck like an actual person.

This entrance wasn’t the only one. For one, it was out in the desert. And unlike the one Harmoni had entered, it was designed for dragons. A rider could try to enter this way, but it would be a long drop, and the rocks were jagged. The dragons, being able to fly, could work around that.

Roosher took them further out into the desert, not heading for the forest at all. Despite the sand dunes and lack of road, the bus ride was surprisingly smooth. More than taking Aqua, at any rate.

~~~

“Out here you can find the only remains of the dragon versus people battle.”

Fleck’s head bolted up in alarm, and he swung it towards Roosher.

Roosher did at least look sheepish. “Now this is a significant thing people living on the planet should know about, but I hope I didn’t say anything wrong. I know it was a brutal war for all involved.”

Fleck wasn’t sure what he thought about the word people. It was a useful word for separating dragons from the other sentient species, he supposed. But by some people’s definition, dragons were people. This was why he used "riders" and not "people".

Harmoni meanwhile, looked out the window. She gasped as she saw what Roosher was talking about.

There were a few things lying out in the sands. Some of it was metal, like pieces of spaceships or weapons. But there were also bones. The rest of the bodies were gone, decomposed or eaten. But it was easy to tell the bones belonged to dragons.

Harmoni clung to Fleck.

“Dragons and people didn’t originally get along. This is the dragon’s home planet, and they saw us as intruders. But when people got here, they didn’t know dragons were sentient. All they saw were monsters coming out of the woodwork. And, well, you can see the results out there.” Roosher waved his hand out at the graveyard outside. “Lucky for all of us, the first dragon rider bond was made during this time. They put a stop to the fighting.”

Fleck bristled, scales rising slightly as he growled. That was an interesting way to put it. Last he heard, the riders that came here weren’t just interested in living here, they were interested in conquering here, destroying the area and remolding it for their own purpose, regardless of if that would work. Yeah, maybe the dragons had been a little aggressive the first time they interacted, chasing the rider species away from their home, but had this guy considered how people treated non-sentient life? The riders were ready to treat them worse than beasts. They didn’t want to believe the first rider about their sentience either. That would be too inconvenient.

Harmoni gripped Fleck tightly, but this time it was less for comfort, and more to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid. But he had moved to her lap, below the back of the seat, so Roosher probably didn't see. Harmoni didn’t say anything either, but she might when the tour was over.